The Pentagon, as the government’s largest buyer of goods and services, is ending a seven-year drawdown of acquisition spending, according to a study released last Wednesday.
By Andrew Smith
The Pentagon, as the government’s largest buyer of goods and services, is ending a seven-year drawdown of acquisition spending, according to a study released last Wednesday.
“The tide has definitely turned in the direction of contract spending,” wrote a team directed by Andrew Hunter of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Defense Department fiscal 2016 contract obligations increased by 7 percent over the previous year, “far higher than predicted,” said the analysis of the outlook for spending on research and development, defense acquisition reform and procurement performance-based data from the Federal Procurement Data System.
Significant boosts in spending commitments were recorded by the Missile Defense Agency, the Air Force and the Navy, “driven primarily by increased obligations for large procurement programs like the C-130J transport aircraft, the KC-45A tanker aircraft, and the Trident II missile program,” CSIS said. “Even the Army, which had declined far more steeply than DoD overall throughout the budget drawdown, was virtually stable between 2015 and 2016.”
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